Tuesday, February 1, 2011

After flying from Dulles > Munich > Izmir, took the bus to the hotel in Kusadasi. The first full day we spent visiting Ephesus and Miletus. I had visited these sites 7 years ago, and not too much has been done since then. The main progress at Ephesus was that the structure covering the excavations near the library has been improved. There was also a big crane at the theater, and a fence kept people from going more than halfway up. Virtually nothing had changed at Miletus. It always is a bit boggling that tourists can have such easy access to these sites poking around in the ruins... Notable artifacts like the "Place of the Jews and God-fearers" inscription at the theater in Miletus are just there for people to walk on. I suppose they've seen worse than tourists in their thousands of years.

In any case, HERE are 42 pics that don't necessarily try to illustrate the sites but were ones I found 'interesting' (for whatever artistic sense I may have...). These pics are reduced from the originals, but you can get the idea. They are all geotagged and linked to Google Maps and to Google Earth. In addition to Ephesus, we visited the Church of St. John the Theologian, the remains of the Ephesian Temple of Artemis (still just one column standing...), and Miletus.

I went back through and added captions to all the pics. If you ever plan to visit, the best book to take with you is probably A Guide to Biblical Sites in Greece and Turkey by Fant and Reddish.( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000WD16XA?ie=UTF8&tag=parablesofjes-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000WD16XA )